Individuals are often comfortable dealing with documents in hardcopy format. However, control of document reproduction and dissemination is a concern because copies of documents containing sensitive information can be easily transmitted from person to person. As such, there is a risk of documents containing sensitive information being reproduced innocently or illicitly by persons without authorization.
Various technologies have been developed to limit the unauthorized copying of sensitive information contained in a document by replacing the sensitive information with machine readable code. U.S. Pat. No. 4,728,984 discloses a bar-coded document that enables the document or document copies to be mailed or exchanged without revealing the documents content to non-authorized persons. Bar code storage density is low and once access to the document is granted, the document is revealed in its entirety. U.S. Pat. No. 5,982,956 discloses sensitive documents that include rules which define duplication restrictions. Once a request for duplication is received the rules are read and a decision is made to allow or disallow the entire contents of the document to be reproduced. U.S. Pat. No. 6,175,714, describes the use of glyphs that encode a security code for access to a reproduced document. The glyphs are placed in the background of the entire document and are visually obtrusive. Once access to the document is granted, the entire document is reproduced.
Prior attempts to control reproduction of documents containing sensitive information offer access that is all or nothing. Once access is granted, it cannot be controlled in any other way which makes it difficult to control who should have access to the information contained within the document. Thus, there is a need in the art for a system and method for securing documents using an electronic data storage device that stores the information as well as the rules for accessing the information.